A cafe con leche and a xuixo (pronounced choo-choo), a sugar-crusted, cream-filled pastry, make a fine breakfast. Enjoying the heavenly combo at one of only a dozen stools at Bar Pinotxo, one of the most beloved stalls just inside the main entrance of Barcelona's Mercat de la Boqueria – also called Mercat de Sant Josep, or more simply the Boqueria – ensures you're in for a delicious summer morning in Spain.
Tourists and locals alike shop at the Boqueria, a labyrinth of more than 250 stalls and bars with a history that dates back hundreds of years. Steps away from the tangle of shoppers and street buskers on La Rambla, one of Barcelona's central thoroughfares, the market's vendors gather under an enormous metal roof to sell all manner of fresh and cured meats (including the native Iberico ham) and seafood, as well as a dizzying array of produce, cheese, nuts, baked goods and tapas. A small stall specializing in pork sits just to the left of the main entrance. Arranged in a neat row, four suckling pigs smile from the case like mascots.
Barcelona's La Boqueria
Sugar-crusted xuixo at Bar Pinotxo.
Suckling pigs.
Fresh fruit drinks in flavors like watermelon, kiwi and coconut.
White-fleshed melons.
Apricots, peaches, plums and pears.
Cal Neguit's lettuces and green cabbage.
Zucchini flowers and peppers at Pètras Fruits del Bosc.
Summer berries at Fruites y Verdures SOLEY Roser.
A vendor arranges mushrooms.
Setting out figs near the entrance of the Boqueria.
Caballa (mackerel) on the fishmonger's island at the center of the market.
Razor clams and percebe (goose barnacles).
Bright shrimp arranged first thing in the morning.
Hungry patrons sitting down for their almuerzo, or "second breakfast."
Fruites Peña specializes in tomatoes of every sort.
Sugar-crusted xuixo at Bar Pinotxo.
Suckling pigs.
Fresh fruit drinks in flavors like watermelon, kiwi and coconut.
White-fleshed melons.
Apricots, peaches, plums and pears.
Cal Neguit's lettuces and green cabbage.
Zucchini flowers and peppers at Pètras Fruits del Bosc.
Summer berries at Fruites y Verdures SOLEY Roser.
A vendor arranges mushrooms.
Setting out figs near the entrance of the Boqueria.
Caballa (mackerel) on the fishmonger's island at the center of the market.
Razor clams and percebe (goose barnacles).
Bright shrimp arranged first thing in the morning.
Hungry patrons sitting down for their almuerzo, or "second breakfast."
Fruites Peña specializes in tomatoes of every sort.
The early din of grumbling stall keepers mixes with the shuffling feet of hundreds of shoppers who've arrived promptly at 8 a.m. A hurried man pours bowls of crushed ice over a rainbow of fresh fruit juices packaged to-go with straws. As the mercury rises, sticky patrons will snatch up these thirst quenchers as they navigate the market's tight aisles.
On the far right side of the Boqueria, a gaggle of customers crowds a few sun-drenched tables just outside the market's cover. Sweet, white-fleshed melons sit alongside tiny pears, plump peaches and plums and fragrant apricots. Lacy summer lettuces go fast, as do the rest of summer's gems: golden zucchini flowers, pimientos de padron (small, sweet peppers, occasionally spicy, often served fried and salted), shining cherries, delicate berries no bigger than English peas, brick red tomatoes, a dozen varieties of mushrooms and fat, fist-sized figs.
On an island in the center of the market, curt, grandmotherly women in flowered aprons wield daunting fish knives, divvying out gallo (a fish that, like several others, is also sold as John Dory) and monkfish, breaking only long enough to take a bite off the end of their bocadillo (a long Spanish sandwich on crusty white bread), or to shoo away shutter-happy tourists by asking, "¿Que quieres comprar?," or "What do you want to buy?" The women and their helpers arrange fresh fish, much of it from the nearby Barceloneta port, next to octopus and squid, long razor clams, percebe (prehistoric-looking goose barnacles), boquerones (the addictive finger-length fish on menus all over town), ruby-colored shrimp and canailla (a type of spiky-shelled snail).
Stools at the market's bars fill with gray-haired locals in search of almuerzo, a "second breakfast," and hung-over twentysomethings who start with beer instead of coffee. One bar displays chickpeas with blood sausage, another, bowls of baby squid. A third catches the eye of every shopper walking by; each of its counters is crowned by a platter piled 8 inches high with raw mushrooms waiting to be cooked. All this to eat -- and it's barely 10 a.m.
Liz Pearson is a writer, consultant, food stylist and contributor to the Los Angeles Times, "Every Day With Rachael Ray" and Saveur.
Photo: Entrance to La Boqueria. Credit: Liz Pearson
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